Article 1German-Austria is a democratic republic. All public powers are put into force by the people.

Article 2German-Austria is a constituent part of the German Republic. Special laws regulate the participation of German-Austria in the legislation and administration of the German Republic as well as the extension of the area of validity of the laws and institutions of the German Republic to German-Austria.(Articles 1 and 2 of the new constitution of German-Austria)

‘… and then Fritz Adler will proclaim the Soviet Republic of Austria. What was shameful about the affair was not so much the childishness of this arrangement as the names which were to be found in connection with it: Rothziegel, Frey, Weihrauch, Ganser, Kisch, Waller etc., all of them Jews.’ (From the diary of Franz Brandl, a senior police official)

On 30 November 1918 the first, still provisional government of the First Republic took office. It first met in the building of the Lower Austria Provincial Assembly and then from 12 November in the Parliament building on the Ringstrasse boulevard.

The new constitution already laid down the union with Germany, which could be interpreted as contradicting Article 1, since the question of the basis of the state – Austrian sovereignty or union with Germany – could also have been put to the people.

Following an appeal made by the Social Democrats on the afternoon when the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed from the ramp in front of Parliament by Franz Dinghofer, the Pan-German President of the Council of State, together with Karl Seitz, a Social Democrat, a crowd of people assembled around the building.

Members of the Red Guard, who belonged to the Communist Party of German-Austria, which had been founded on 3 November, tried to storm the Parliament during the proclamation. According to a number of reports they tore the white middle stripe out of a red-white-red flag and tried to hoist a completely red flag. This is how the senior police official, who later became the head of the Vienna police, describes what happened next:

Shots were fired towards the building from the street. One bullet hit the head of the press department, a Social Democrat, in one eye, which he lost, thirty other persons, including two from the people’s militia were more or less seriously injured, other shots hit the marble gods on the frieze. And suddenly there was the Red Guard, standing on the ramp, and a general quarrel broke out: Frey, Kisch, Waller started shouting at one another, inside the building Seitz, Deutsch and Rothziegl were debating the question of who bore the guilt. ‘It was from the Parliament that the first shots were fired at us,’ Rothziegl said, ‘even coming from a machine gun’. ‘But it was only shutters being pulled down that made such a noise.’ ‘Theywere shots.’ ‘No, shutters’. Finally it was the comrade who accepted the shutters as a form of apology. And then they all went home. ‘Our time has not yet come,’ the Communists said.

The simultaneous occupation of the editorial offices the Neue Freie Presse newspaper by the Red Guards was also a failure. All they succeeded in doing was to print a flyer which is supposed to have reported the successful proclamation of the ‘Social Republic’ – at least according to the account given by Johann Schober, at the time head of the Vienna police force.

Those who participated in this unsuccessful attempt by the Communist Party to establish a soviet republic as had been done with at least partial success in Germany included not only Egon Erwin Kisch but also a number of prominent men of letters and intellectuals. Among these were Albert Paris Gütersloh, Albert Ehrenstein and also Franz Werfel, who later, as a disillusioned Socialist, underwent a political ‘conversion’ to conservative Catholicism. Some days before 12 November Werfel had given an impassioned speech at a protest demonstration held by the Red Guard in front of the headquarters of the Vienna Bankverein, in which he argued that at present the forces of revolution were still too weak to risk storming the bank. But the right time would come and ‘then we will also occupy these palaces of money.’

One lasting result of the events of 12 November was the accusation that it had been precisely the newly founded Communist Party which had carried out the first attempt at a putsch in the new republic.

Contents related to this chapter

Aspects

The First World War marked the end of the “long nineteenth century”. The monarchic empires were replaced by new political players. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy disintegrated into separate nation states. The Republic of German Austria was proclaimed in November 1918, and Austria was established as a federal state in October 1920. The years after the war were highly agitated ­– in a conflicting atmosphere of revolution and defeat, and political, economic, social and cultural achievements and setbacks.

Persons, Objects & Events

Friedrich Adler, son of the Social Democratic Party leader Victor Adler, was the Party Secretary of the Austrian Social Democrats between 1911 and 1914. As an opponent of the war, he objected to the Social Democrat war policy and ultimately resigned from his position as Party Secretary. On 21 October 1916, Friedrich Adler assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister Karl Graf Stürgkh, whom he regarded as being responsible for the continuation of the war. Adler was then sentenced to death, but reprieved by Emperor Karl and amnestied shortly before the end of the war.

Developments

The Republic of German Austria was proclaimed on 12 November 1918. The name also marked the direction of the new state, which strove for annexation with Germany, a development that was explicitly forbidden by the victorious powers. In the historical memory, it is seen as the “remnant” of the Monarch, the “state no one wanted” or the “reluctant state”. However, this image was created after 1945 as a negative foil to the successful Second Republic. It says nothing of the hopes and opportunities after the Monarchy and the war that many people saw in this republic.